Cross Wars

First I have to assume the film people involved with “Cross Wars” were going for a B-Movie feel, which is fine. I generally like B-Movies and can usually enjoy the campiness of them. Sadly this movie didn’t make the grade of B.

In doing a little reading I found that “Cross Wars” is the sequel to “Cross,” a film trying to be in the “out of the comic book and on to your big screen” kind of movie. The basic rundown is that Callan Cross (Brian Austin Green) is handed down this Celtic cross amulet that has powers, and Callan is now kind of a superhero. He rounds up a team of folks to save the world from bad people.

As it is there is this little kid who buys the latest “Cross” comic book, and his sister reads it to him leading us to the “film” story of the comic book. With that we get the flashbacks to commentary by the kid. Why? I don’t know. Fine. As the story goes, however, Muerte (Danny Trejo) is hell-bent on killing Callan’s crew, but Muerte needs some help. Who do you call? Well, you call the immortal Gunnar (Vinnie Jones), but the problem is that Gunnar has his own agenda, somehow planning to wipe out the universe with some glowing thing that disintegrates everything in its path.

Having to deal with Muerte is bad enough, but now Callan has to save the universe so who is he going to call? Well, he enlists the help of Riley (Amy Jane). She has an all-girl killing crew, and an amulet of her own. Oooh, two superheroes!

Yes, there is the “climactic” fight scene, Callan figures out how to save the universe, and all is well, sort of, as Gunnar can’t really be killed so we can have another sequel if we want.

Even as a fan of the B-Movie, I wanted to like this film. It had a group of women killers and instant campiness built in, but there generally needs to be a little more to suck me into the fun, maybe at least better jokes or some over-the-top violence, but “Cross Wars” just didn’t have it. Sure, there was a lot of gunfire and fake blood splatter, but not the kind that has you laugh. The best that the twelve year old in me was able to find funny were the jokes about the spherical detonators, a.k.a. exploding balls.

Other than the jokes about balls the other saving graces in this movie were the likes of the ever-fun in a B-Movie, or any movie for that fact, Danny Trejo, and Vinnie Jones was wonderful as the campy, super-evil villain, Gunnar.

Maybe there is a group of people who will have fun watching this movie, but for me it just seemed like a lot of bad acting, a bad story, not enough over-the-top violence, and instead of B-Movie it was more of a D-Movie, or by my standards a 1 star out of 5 film.